Essex 'lion' joins list of phantom British beasts

Hunt for Beast of Bodmin in 1995, which led to a government inquiry, was just the first of many UK 'big cat' sightings

The Loch Ness Monster is the best-known mythical British beast, but big cats have featured heavily in local folklore since the Beast of Bodmin moor was 'sighted' in 1995. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

Bodmin Moor is not the only potential hiding place for a big cat on these isles, however. Chris Swallow, an off-duty Ministry of Defence police dog handler, filmed what appeared to be a black, panther-sized cat prowling along the railway lines in Helensburgh, Argyll, in July 2009.

He first thought it was a labrador dog, but decided it was something altogether more unusual when he saw its tail was "about twice the length that a dog's would have been".

In 2007, a large black cat was photographed walking along a 3ft-high and 7in-wide dry stone wall in Derbyshire. Taking into account the measurements of the wall, experts calculated the cat would have been at least 18in-high and 3ft-long excluding tail. Specialist Paul Paterson wrote on the Big Cat Monitors website that it appeared to be "a cat of reasonable size, fit and healthy, and in command of its surroundings".

Peter Jackson, a businessman, got rather more than he bargained for in February this year when he looked into his back garden in Hazel Grove and saw what he described as a 4.5ft-long, 3ft-tall "mountain lion"-type animal "with a tail similar in size to its body" and a "low growl".

"It looked like some sort of puma to me because you could see the power in its shoulders," he told the Manchester Evening News. Experts told the paper the animal may have been a melanistic savannah – a medium-sized black cat, probably imported as a pet.